Hey there, and welcome back to another book review. Today I’m reviewing Nowhere Like Home by Sara Shepard. If you’re thinking about checking out Nowhere Like Home yourself, don’t worry about spoilers. The first part of my reviews are always spoiler-free so you can see if the book is your cup of tea. After a quick summary and a basic review, I’ll give a spoiler warning and do a deep dive into everything I loved and hated about Nowhere Like Home.

Nowhere Like Home is by Sara Shepard, who also wrote the popular Pretty Little Liars series. I haven’t read those books or watched the show, but based on what I do know, it seems like Nowhere Like Home follows the same vibe of a group of women all scheming to cover up murder and the secrets of their pasts.

Content Warning

I always like to give a quick content warning for any sensitive topics. These are some content warnings for Nowhere Like Home:

Ableism
Abuse
Alcoholism
Death
Drug usage
Kidnapping
Mental illness
Murder
Pregnancy
Sexual assault
Violence

Quick Synopsis

In Nowhere Like Home, Lenna, our main character, arrives on a mothers-and-women-only community isolated in the desert of Arizona. She’s there to reconnect with an old friend and work through some bad moments from her past—but the longer she’s there, the more she begins to question how easy it will be to get home. It features many of the vibes you can expect from a secluded, almost cult-like “mommune.” This story has a strong theme of motherhood and frequent mentions of pregnancy, so that’s something to consider if that may be a trigger for you.

My Rating

Everybody has to come up with their own system for judging and rating books, and here’s mine:

One star: I couldn’t finish the book. (DNF)
Two stars: I struggled to finish, but I did.
Three stars: This book was okay and worth reading.
Four stars: I liked this book and I would recommend it to a friend.
Five stars: I’d read this book again, and it’s going on my favorites shelf.

I gave Nowhere Like Home a three-star rating because I enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t recommend it to a friend or read it again. There were moments in which I started to feel more invested in the story, but overall, I found the pacing to be a little too slow in this one. I also thought the big reveal at the end was a bit lackluster, and was hoping for something a bit more surprising.

If you read Nowhere Like Home and enjoyed it, you may also enjoy:

She Started It by Sian Gilbert
Only If You’re Lucky by Stacy Willingham
The Villa by Rachel Hawkins

Book Cover: Only If You’re Lucky by Stacy Willingham

Summary

We’re now entering the spoiler-y part of this review. If you think Nowhere Like Home sounds like your cup of tea, click away, read it, and come back to see if you agree or disagree with my critique. If you like the sound of the book but you don’t want to read it, don’t worry, I’ll give you the full rundown.

SPOILERS

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SPOILERS -

Nowhere Like Home opens with a panicked Lenna in the airport with her baby wailing. Jason has been a big crier since he was born, and the constant upset is starting to get to Lenna, convincing her she’s a bad mother. It’s a big part of the reason she agrees to visit her friend Rhiannon where she lives out in the Arizona desert with several other women, despite the tense history between them.

The taxi driver shows some hesitation at taking Lenna out to the meet-up spot, but she ignores this and climbs into Rhiannon’s SUV when it pulls up.

Rhiannon takes Lenna back to the property, where Lenna starts to meet the other women. As she settles in, and becomes more unsettled, we learn a bit more about her history with Rhiannon.

Lenna and Rhiannon met back in L.A., where they became fast friends. Rhiannon got Lenna a job at her magazine as a copy editor. During the beginning of their friendship, they start to see another woman, Gillian, around the office. Gillian has an Instagram on which she posts about her social anxiety, and her wishes to become friends with both Lenna and Rhiannon.

Rhiannon doesn’t like Gillian and finds her to be weird, and especially doesn’t like her frequent advances. One day, when Gillian approaches Rhiannon, she mentions wanting to be friends with her and Lenna, and Rhiannon snaps back at her, saying it’s not going to happen.

Then, Rhiannon leaves work suddenly, and she’s gone for more than a month. During this time, Lenna and Gillian become closer, and Gillian does a lot of work to make Lenna question her friendship with Rhiannon.

Gillian talks a lot about her roommate Sadie, who is using IVF and trying to get pregnant. Gillian feels like she’s being forced out of the living situation and posts on her Instagram that Sadie is acting violently toward her.

Gillian starts to act a little more weird, saying more bad things about Sadie and Rhiannon and alluding to something bad from her past. Finally, Lenna realizes that Gillian texted Rhiannon from Lenna’s phone, telling Rhiannon to lose her number.

Lenna is furious with Gillian and confronts her the next morning when Gillian is out for a jog. The two get into a fight near the edge of the cliff and Gillian rushes toward Lenna like she might push her over the edge. After their scuffle, Lenna wakes up on a park bench with a pounding head, thinking Gillian went over the side of the cliff.

She carries this with her as she meets her husband and has her baby, keeping in the back of her mind that she’s a murderer. The police look into the murder, and even suspect Sadie, the housemate, for a while, but eventually rule that it was an accident.

Back at the community, Lenna is starting to become more unsettled. She finds out that a woman at the community who goes by “Sarah” is actually Sadie, Gillian’s old roommate, and Lenna starts to suspect Rhiannon of plotting something to drag up the past.

Rhiannon swears she had no idea the two of them knew of each other, and agrees to get Lenna out of there that night. When Lenna goes to meet her, she finds Sarah instead, who’s just as suspicious of Lenna.

The two of them realize that neither of them is responsible for their meeting, and Sarah admits that she was the one who pushed Gillian over the cliff when she found out Gillian may or may not have been messing with her IVF stuff.

Rhiannon is missing, and Sarah and Lenna work together to try and find her. They end up climbing up a nearby structure to get phone service, but while there, they’re confronted by another member of the community, Coral, who reveals herself to be Gillian’s daughter.

Coral, who was adopted after Gillian gave her away, found out what Sarah and Lenna did to her mother, and has been plotting her revenge by bringing them all to the community. She ties them up in a cave with Rhiannon, and starts to lay explosives around the area.

Another teen from the community, who is close friends with Coral, arrives just in time to save them. Though she’s carrying a gun, and coral is shot, she claims she wasn’t the one to fire on her.

Rhiannon, Sarah, Lenna and her baby, and the other teen all get far enough away from the blast by the time is goes off, but Coral is left behind.

The community dissolves after more information comes out about different members, including the leader, who drained the joint community account to pay off her own debts.

Lenna returns to her husband and tells him about everything, and the two of them are able to have a much stronger relationship going forward.

Deep Dive

So, now that you know what happens in Nowhere Like Home, let’s get into some of my thoughts and criticisms for this book.

Nowhere Like Home is by Sara Shepard, who also wrote the popular Pretty Little Liars series. I haven’t read those books or watched the show, but based on what I do know, it seems like Nowhere Like Home follows the same vibe of a group of women all scheming to cover up murder and the secrets of their pasts.

The common setting choice of an isolated community for thrillers is expected, but not unwanted. I enjoyed the idea of a community of women as the basis for this story, and I liked that the community turned out not to be sinister (with the exception of Coral) and instead, just full of regular human flaws.

I think the choice to put all your characters into an isolated situation raises the stakes, but can also be kind of a crutch if it’s not done well. The setting creates automatic tension, which makes it a little easier to ignore our characters, which is kind of what I think happened in this case.

While I enjoyed the setting and think the desert also offers its own pressure for the characters—I was just hoping for a little more character development outside of the setting.

There are a LOT of characters in this one, which gives us a huge cast of people to suspect as the schemer, but also made the reveal not quite as interesting. While Gillian did kind of mention her trauma around birth in her past, I feel like there’s just not enough there to make Coral’s reveal as her daughter meaningful to the reader.

Coral as a villain also feels a little flat. Her grand plan is to round up the women and blow them up as revenge for the death of her birth mother, whom she never met. I’ll admit people do weird things for weird reasons, but this feels a little like the caricature of a villain rather than a real person doing awful things.

Motherhood, pregnancy, and babies are all very, very prevalent themes in this one, which may be uncomfortable for some readers, so keep that in mind if you’re planning to read this one.

Overall, I think a little more character development for our main characters, including Gillian, Rhiannon, and Lenna, may have really benefitted this story. I gave it three stars because I enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t recommend it to a friend or read it again. It’s a perfectly good thriller with an interesting cult-aspect and a cast of women at the center.

These area some books I may read next:

Green Dot by Madeleine Gray
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
Right On Cue by Falon Ballard

Book Review | Nowhere Like Home by Sara Shepard